The Gloamglozer
by Odeveca
Summary: A story from the Gloamglozer's POV. ONE SHOT.


I thought it was a prank at first.

I couldn't be this creature, this hideous being, that hungered for other's emotions, fed purely off the fear in it's victims.

Nevertheless what I first believed made little difference.

I found my true nature.

I found pleasure in conniving and daring curious souls into a fate worse than death, and possibly off the Edge itself.

I was not created to feel, but I hungered for it in the beings I found before me. Their curiosity. Their pleasure. Their fascination, fear of pain, suffering, and death, and hope for the love they shared with one another.

I stole it all, and yet... _I was still empty._

I was meant to be full.

To fill the void that kept growing within me.

After all, I sprung from the power of primordial beings that had existed before the Edge, _a glister born of Open Sky_ , that had enough gall and fancy to create beings that had no place or niche among the beings of this desolate floating piece of land. I was greater than this world could ever offer me. I deserved much more than these fickle mortal beings could give me.

Still, I roamed my path of hunger with the monsters and beasts that also sucked the life of others before the coming of the Mother Storm.

In those early years I was left unmolested.

That was, until a herald came to warned those of my hunting grounds that the Mother Storm would one day come to wreck her havoc upon the lands that I consumed from. I paid them no mind, heralds from _Kobold the Wise_ were no friends of mine. I had no friends. I had only victims and prey, and I lavished in my singularity.

That was until the fourthling King of Wisdom and Enlightenment banished me from a power that did not belong to him. As I was squashed into the place that existed and yet did not exist, I cursed him, cursed him and his precious Time of Enlightenment. If the curse worked or not, the Mother Storm did come, an elemental force that collapsed his Thousand Tribes, and pleased me very well with the chaos and violence it spread in it's wake. I pulled up the memory of satisfaction to go with the thought of Kobold falling so low.

As I existed without having the pleasure to feed, I awoke again.

"Gloamglozer."

There was the name again. The one they had given me, the one that had cursed me into the void.

"What do you wish of me?" I tempted the soul of _Linius Pallitax._

"I made you from the Great Storm. I have power over you." I grinned a toothy smile, curling my forming claws, and lowering my rammed head.

"What do you wish of me?" I waited for the permission that I never needed, but favored above all. There was nothing sweeter than willing prey.

"I want to know everything you know."

"What will you give me?"

"This not a negotiation."

He was so right. Very few of my prey knew the answer. "You're right. It's never was a negotiation."

I breathed in his scent, and then clutched both sides of his face to take what was rightfully mine. Opening my mouth to steal from him the curiosity of the knowledge-hoarding Academia, his fear of never being great enough, and savored the love he still kept for his daughter, Maris. I saw the life drain from him.

"I will give your daughter my thanks, for the first meal is always the best, and I am not without my manners." The soul's skeleton was ripped of his soul, his emotions now belonged to me, and what was left stared up at me, and I shivered in the energy that flowed through my resurrected form.

Despite my newfound strength, which I displayed in burning down the Palace of Shadows, Quintinius Verginix the sky pirate, better known as CloudWolf banished me with Chine, something my elder enemy, Kobold had managed to contain me in.

I unleashed my fury at this Quint's wit and impudence to try it again.

I stole all the emotions I could on my way to the Deepwoods, making my name known once more, and gave something to Quint something in return.

 _Stone-sickness._

Let the pirates fly their dastardly ships with that.

In the years that would come I enjoyed the sight of pirates ships falling to the ground below, tearing asunder the legacy and times another would be enemy of mine.

"I curse you Quint. Cloudwolf. I curse you to the Mother Storm."

I felt her then. That she would come for him. She would come for _Sanctaphrax_.

It would seem that she and I were made of the same marrow. That we both were resilient and terrible in our curses upon the Edge.

I knew she favored me when she sent me the one and only son of Cloudwolf.

Twig.

I followed him, a hardy little outcast, learned from him, others willing to sacrifice themselves for him, and slithered close until he came asking for me.

When he whispered to the Edge, to me, "I think it's all right."

I answered greedily. "I am glad to hear it Master Twig."

His surprise was a sultry sweet decadence.

I twirled invisible in the mist before him. "You have traveled far since you strayed from the woodland path, so very far," it had been a delicious journey, "and I have tracked you every step of the way."

He fell to his knees as I mentioned the slaughterhouse, the goblins, and trolls and all the other miserable creatures that had caused him happiness and heartbreak. I told him that it was he that summoned me, not the other way around.

"I summoned you?"

"Oh Gloamglozer, help me find the path." I recounted the times I had saved him, how I always watched out for the exiled, unloved, and those that had no one. He took it like a man that had not tasted in years. I offered him everything, everything he could ever want, to be anything he ever wanted, and he took my hand off the Edge just like all the rest.

I was disappointed. "They all fall for it! All the poor little goblins and trolls, waifs and strays, they all believe that they are special. They all listen. They all follow my voice... It's pathetic!" Times could change, but emotions seemed to be live eternal in these beings that did not listen to their basic instincts.

"But you said I was special?" This Twig was so vain to believe he was so different from the rest.

"Did I really?" I finally let him have the taste his father had once given to me.

"You little fool! Do you really believe you could be like me? You are insignificant as the rest. You are nothing! YOU ARE NOTHING!" I wanted to imprint that into his mind, so that fear was the last thing he would feel. My favorite.

"But why are you doing this? Why?"

The question I had asked from the beginning, alas from the babe's mouth.

"Because I am a gloamglozer." That was the only truth I needed. "A deceiver. A trickster, a cheat and a fraud. All my fine words and fancy promises count for nothing. I seek all those who have strayed from the path." Just as a great many things he needed to learn from the Edge. That many like him had come here and never returned, "and I lure them to the Edge. AND I DESPOSE OF THEM!"

I let the son of Cloudwolf fall off the Edge. To his death. To his ruin. Gloating.

I did not count on the Caterbird catching him.

 _Damn._

Another enemy, for another day.

I knew for one thing was certain, I would always get my due.


End file.
